1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for machines such as, but not restricted to, vending machines and gaming machines which allows remote assessing of contents such as, but not restricted to product usage and cash accumulation.
2. Background Information
Many vending machines for food, soft drink, and candy products, especially older vending machines, do not have any remote means for the assessment of vending machine contents such as, but not restricted to, product inventory and cash accumulations.
As much as half the trips made by a vending machine route man are trips that were would have been unnecessary had the man had approximate, real time, information on the machine contents.
Also, on newer machines, there is no real time measure of what is actually being delivered. If the machine' delivery mechanisms fail, a sale is still recorded as if the product was delivered. As a specific example, where the product movement is a helical coil, if the coil becomes loose from the coil drive motor, the internal computer registers a product delivery that did not take place.
As will be seen from the subsequent description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention, this present invention alleviates shortcomings of existing methods of assessing vending machine contents.